Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, a competitor to Thomas Edison for the creation of the first incandescent light bulb, invented carbon fiber to help with that pursuit back in 1860. For more than 150 years, carbon fiber was refined and improved, yet retained its natural blackish-gray hue. Attempts to infuse color corrupted the material’s mechanical properties.
Not until a decade ago, in 2013, was the chemical code cracked. Composite specialists with experience in Formula 1 devised a process for coloring carbon fiber while preserving its structural integrity. That work laid the foundation for Hypetex, an England-based company whose first major foray into sports is the Adidas Kromaskin field hockey stick. Other partners include New Balance, Jaguar Land Rover and, until 2021, Formula 1 itself.
That stick, adorned with Adidas’s distinctive three stripes, is a visible part of the Men’s Hockey World Cup 2023 in India that began this week, especially during the 2-2 draw played by Germany and Belgium on Tuesday.
“I started using the Kromaskin stick the moment it was released,” said German national team player Christopher Rühr, an Adidas-sponsored athlete who won an Olympic bronze in 2016. “It’s perfect for forwards like me. It has the ultimate power for goal shots but also a soft touch for when you’re receiving and dribbling.”
What Hypetex offers is more than the aesthetics benefit of infused color replacing an outer lacquer on sticks, which is prone to chipping. In combination with a micro-cell core that is inserted into the head of the stick, the Kromaskin outperformed eight premium hockey sticks, according to testing conducted by the Sports Technology Institute at Loughborough University.
The Adidas Kromaskin stick — a finalist in the Sports & Leisure category of the 2022 JEC Innovation Awards, a prestigious honor within the composite materials industry — had a 16% higher coefficient of restitution (COR), which is a measure of power transferred into the ball, and 70% less variation in COR.
Even though modern field hockey sticks are generally made of synthetic materials such as fiberglass, aramid and carbon fiber, they are prone to similar variation in performance the way wooden baseball bats are.
“What [hockey athletes] were finding previously, which was their pain point, was that there was a massive inconsistency in the performance of one stick versus the other because the production process was really dependent on the user,” said Hypetex CEO Marc Cohen. “By creating this micro-cell core, what we ended up doing was standardizing the process very much, leaving it and moving it away from the production risks that come with individuals or labor. That in itself created a much, much lower variance across sticks to the point that there was insignificant. Every stick turned out like the previous one.”
Hypetex maintains its own manufacturing facility in the southeast of England, which enables tighter quality control and longer-term competitive advantages.
“We moved production away from Pakistan, whereby a lot of probably the top 10 brands all get produced from the same factory,” Cohen said. “So any IP that gets brought out in one season for one brand, very quickly finds its way into every other brand. So when Adidas had an idea around designing a new stick and developing new solutions, they were very keen to ensure that value didn't get diluted directly into other people's manufacturing.”
German national team player Christopher Rühr, pictured here, says the Kromaskin stick is "perfect for forwards" because it provides both power and consistency.Courtesy of Hypetex
Though the core IP around colored carbon fiber was first created 10 years ago, Cohen acknowledged that finding the best product-market fit and implementing the necessary processes for volume manufacturing took time for a pioneering process of colorizing the carbon fiber.
“So that's where the trickiness has been, is how do you create something that is, in essence, a layer between layers, that doesn't affect the layering system?” Cohen said. “So there's a really interesting equilibrium that's looked for by using fibers and using what's called the matrix. The matrix is like a glue system that goes within the fibers and enables the structure to actually exist in the form that it's been designed for.
"Now, by adding something, what we do — the color — to the fibers, you're creating a layer that could be a resistance or an issue when fabricating or laminating or creating that product. So that's where the design of the chemistry was necessary to be very tech-orientated to enable those same mechanical properties.”
